1 Runaway Man (15 page)

“In what capacity?” Seymour demanded to know. “While it’s true that he was recently retained by Bates, Winslow and Seymour, that particular matter has no bearing whatsoever on this tragic event. Furthermore, he is no longer in our employ.”

“I’m working for someone else now,” I informed him.

“And who might that be?”

I smiled at him. “Sorry, that’s confidential.”

“This is totally inappropriate. Ben, I insist that you take that elevator back downstairs right this minute.”

“Not going to happen, Counselor,” Legs told him. “Ben’s with me.”

“Mr. Seymour, why didn’t you want me to mention your firm’s name to Paul and Laurie Weiner?”

“I have no comment to make on that. It was … most unfortunate what happened to the young man.”

“All sorts of unfortunate things seem to be happening lately. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I can see where you’re going with this, Ben,” he said with a shake of his sleek head. “And I have a word of advice for you: Don’t. There’s no connection whatsoever between Bruce Weiner’s murder and Kathleen Kidd’s suicide.”

“Yeah, there is,” Legs pointed out. “There’s
you
.”

“I’m a senior partner of an immense law firm. We have many, many partners and literally hundreds of clients.”

“One of whom was looking for Bruce Weiner. How come?”

“I have nothing to say on that matter, Lieutenant.”

“Okay, then who bugged our car and our office?” I pressed him. “Who tailed me to Candlewood Lake?”

“I have no direct, personal knowledge of any such behavior.”

Legs tugged at his goatee thoughtfully. “That sure sounded like plausible deniability to me. Did that sound like plausible deniability to you?”

I nodded. “Kind of did.”

“Lieutenant, you have been invited into Mrs. Kidd’s home as a courtesy.” There was more than a trace of irritation in Seymour’s voice now. “I am not going to stand here and be given the third degree by you. You will cease this line of inquiry immediately.”

Legs stepped in closer to him. A lot closer. “Let’s get something straight, Counselor,” he growled, poking Seymour in the chest with his index finger. People like Mr. Classy Guy really don’t like to be poked in the chest. “I don’t work for you. I run an investigation how I choose to run it. And if you don’t like it you can take it up with my superiors.”

“Oh, I will.” Seymour whipped out his cell phone, fuming. “I’m calling Commissioner Feldman right now. I will have you thrown off of this case before your feet hit the street.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, Peter,” boomed Eleanor Saltonstall Kidd as she came striding toward us. The reigning doyenne of Fifth Avenue society was a tall, regal, silver-haired woman in her eighties who positively filled the vast marble entry hall with her aura of money and power. There was no question that she was someone of great privilege who was accustomed to having things done her way. None. She was dressed plainly in a matching sweater and skirt of dark green cashmere and a pair of sturdy cordovan oxfords. No jewelry. Just a wristwatch that I swore looked like it was a Timex. “It was my intention to extend every courtesy to the NYPD,” she said. “Not to issue threats.”

“Mrs. Kidd, I owe you an apology,” Seymour said hurriedly. “I thought that Commissioner Feldman and I had an understanding. However, he’s chosen to send us a slovenly, ill-mannered young lieutenant who has brought along a private investigator with no connection whatsoever to this or any other—”

“Oh, will you
please
shut your mouth, Peter?”

Peter Seymour shut his mouth. I sure wish I had it on film. It would have been fun to replay it over and over again.

“The commissioner has ‘chosen’ to send us none other than the highly decorated Detective Lieutenant Larry Diamond.” Mrs. Kidd studied Legs, looking him up and down as if he were an exotic breed of mastiff at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “His grooming may not be what we’re accustomed to, but I am assured that he’s the sharpest detective in all of Manhattan—which is to say all of New York City. I was expecting him. I was
not
expecting anyone else, but if Lieutenant Diamond has asked this young man to accompany him then I’m certain he has his reasons. And we shall respect those reasons.” She extended her hand to him. “I’m Eleanor Kidd, Lieutenant. Kindly excuse my attorney’s bellicosity. He gets paid a great deal of money to behave that way. Although, frankly, I doubt he behaves any differently when his meter’s not running. And your young companion is?…”

“Ben Golden of Golden Legal Services, Mrs. Kidd,” Legs told her. “Ben tracks missing young people. And if his name sounds familiar that’s because his father was Meyer Golden.”

The old lady raised her eyebrows. “
The
Meyer Golden? I’m honored to meet you, Ben.”

“I’m sorry it’s under such sad circumstances, ma’am.”

She sighed heavily. “Kathleen was a troubled soul. I hope that she’s found some small measure of peace now. Please join us in the library, will you? I’ll ring for tea.”

The library was no more than three times the size of my entire apartment and was lined from floor to twenty-foot ceiling with bookcases filled with leather-bound books. There were rolling library ladders on rails so you could reach the books on the top shelves if you ever needed to. And there was another chandelier in there, too. I guess you can never have too many. Two deep leather sofas and a matching pair of leather club chairs were set before the fire that was roaring in the fireplace. A life-sized oil portrait of the late, great Black Jack Kidd himself was hanging over the mantel, where an antique clock was tick-tocking away. It was five minutes slow, according to my dad’s Omega. Four tall windows looked out over Central Park. From where I stood, I could see the skating rink, the Sheep Meadow and the rowboat lake. Hell, I could see all the way across the park to the apartment towers on Central Park West, the Hudson River, New Jersey and, way off in the distance, the Grand Tetons. Okay, I lied. But trust me, the view was so amazing that it was hard to pull my eyes from it.

When I finally did, I managed to focus on the two people who stood there, shoulder to shoulder, looking extremely ill at ease. Their faces were plenty familiar to me. They were
the
hottest New York power couple of the moment.

Our would-be next governor wasn’t nearly as tall as I’d expected he’d be from his photos. I doubt whether Bobby the K topped off at more than five-feet-eight. But he gave the impression of size because he was built thick through the chest and shoulders. Plus he had a really huge head. Seriously, the man had the most humongous melon I’d ever seen. His thick shock of hair was pure silver just like his mother’s, which was unusual for a man who’d barely turned forty. His features, in contrast, were strikingly youthful. He had round apple cheeks and bright robin’s egg-blue eyes. In photographs, those blue eyes usually gleamed with boyish enthusiasm. Not today. He wore a dark gray suit, white shirt and dark blue tie. His feet in their polished black loafers were no bigger than mine, I noticed. They might even have been smaller.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said somberly. The hand that shook mine was small, too, and on the soft side. “Sorry you fellows had to come to us.”

“We’re essentially trapped here because of the media horde,” Meg explained. “They follow us everywhere we go. Comes with the territory. Most unfortunate.”

Meg Grayson Kidd had a thrusting chin and didn’t move her lips when she talked. That particular affectation used to be called Locust Valley Lockjaw. I don’t know if it still is. It’s some sort of a WASP boarding school thingy. She was the same height as her husband in her low-heeled pumps. And wore a nicely tailored pair of gabardine slacks over what was clearly a size double-wide butt—which, again, you wouldn’t know from the photos. Those strictly zoomed in on her sharp edges—the high forehead, the sculpted cheekbones and that trademark Grayson chin. Meg wore her light brown hair cropped short. No makeup. Just a touch of lipstick. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, but she wasn’t pretty either. Mannish, I guess you’d call her. There was absolutely nothing girlie-girl about her. Her gaze was extremely direct. The lady didn’t so much as blink. If a housefly was dozing on a lampshade fifteen feet away, I swear she knew it was there. Her grip, when she shook my hand, was way firmer than her husband’s. The many magazine profiles I’d read about Meg always emphasized how outdoorsy she was—especially her passionate love for skeet shooting. Her being a gun owner and proud member of the National Rifle Association played well with conservative upstate voters.

I sat down on one of the sofas next to Legs. Mrs. Kidd sat on the sofa across the coffee table from us, with Peter Seymour by her side. Bobby the K and Meg took the club chairs. A maid in an honest-to-god uniform brought in our tea on an honest-to-god teacart. The matching five-piece tea service looked to be genuine silver and quite old. She set a cup and saucer before each of us and poured the tea, then rustled out, closing the door softly behind her.

Mrs. Kidd said, “Please be aware, Lieutenant, that while I am willing to cooperate with the NYPD, I will only discuss Kathleen with you on this one occasion. I will be as candid and brutally honest with you as I can be, even though I find the prospect tremendously painful. Nothing that I say to you this morning is for public attribution. I do not wish to see one word of it in any newspaper or television news report. If I do, I will know the source and I will have your badge.” She turned her regal head in my direction, her blue eyes glinting at me. “And you will lose your license to operate in the state of New York. Furthermore, I want both of you to give me your word, as gentlemen, that what we say here in this room will remain confidential.”

“You have it,” Legs said.

“Absolutely,” I assured her.

The old lady took a sip of her tea. It looked like a stage sip to me. I don’t think she actually swallowed anything. She was just collecting herself. “Kathleen was a sunny and outgoing child,” she began. “Smart as a whip and a gifted artist. She drew instinctively and beautifully. She was also a lovely child with long, flowing blond hair. She had many, many friends. Everyone adored her. ‘Our little gift,’ we called her. Tommy and I had tried to have another child after Bobby and we’d all but given up when I discovered I was pregnant with Kathleen. Tommy was nearly fifty by the time she was born. She was six full years younger than Bobby. There was such an age gap between them that they barely grew up in the same house together. He was already off to boarding school by the time she was nine.” Mrs. Kidd fell silent for a moment. The fire crackled. The mantel clock tick-tocked. She took a deep breath and continued. “As Kathleen underwent puberty her personality began to change for the worse. By the age of twelve she became wildly moody. She’d be listless and withdrawn for days at a time, then burst forth into sudden excitement or shockingly violent anger. She’d shriek obscenities at us, throw things, break things. Naturally, we were quite alarmed. It was all of a pattern that Tommy had experienced before. His poor mother, Clarissa, was emotionally fragile in much the same way.”

“She died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills back in the sixties, didn’t she?” Legs put in.

“It was no accident, Lieutenant. It was a suicide. And whatever genetic demon it was that plagued Clarissa got passed on to poor Kathleen, I’m afraid. She was no longer happy at the private school she’d been attending here in the city. She was disruptive in class. Got into fights with the girls who’d been her nearest and dearest friends. Not just arguments. Kathleen actually bloodied several prized Park Avenue noses. One day, in a fit of rage, she punched her fist through a classroom window and severed a vein in her wrist. They had to rush her to the hospital. After that episode, her pediatrician sent her to Dr. Marvin Levin, the top child psychoanalyst in the city.”

“Is he still practicing?” Legs asked.

Mrs. Kidd narrowed her gaze at him ever so slightly. “Why, no. He passed away at least ten years ago. Dr. Levin was extremely reluctant to stigmatize Kathleen with any sort of a label. He told us that children who are experiencing the hormonal changes of puberty often exhibit extreme personality changes. Even the most extreme behavior may simply be a phase that the child will outgrow in a year. Kathleen was a bright and accomplished girl, after all. She had no neurological disorders of any kind. He suggested that we place her in the Barrow School up in Millbrook. Barrow was, or I should say is, a private residential middle school for troubled young teenagers such as Kathleen. The classes are small. They offer daily counseling and group therapy sessions. And they keep the children extremely busy. The school was once the country estate of a railroad baron. There are two hundred acres of grounds. Chickens and goats to mind. A vegetable garden to tend. Dr. Levin told us many of Barrow’s students were able to return to traditional schools after a relatively short stay.” Mrs. Kidd gazed into the fire for a moment, her jaw tensing. “I remember the day we sat Kathleen down in this very room and talked to her about going there. She was in one of her morose moods. Didn’t care whether she went there or not. Didn’t care about a blessed thing. So off she went.”

“And when was this?” Legs asked.

“It was in … 1989,” Mrs. Kidd replied. “We visited her regularly, of course. That first semester Tommy and I must have gone up there practically every weekend. We’d have a picnic together if the weather permitted. She
seemed
happy there. Didn’t you think so, Bobby?”

“Yes, I did, Mother,” Bobby the K confirmed, as Meg watched him attentively. “I didn’t see Kathleen real often in those days. I was away at Choate. But I distinctly remember the weekend when I went up there with you. Kathleen seemed real upbeat. She had that light back in her eyes again.”

“Dr. Levin was cautiously optimistic,” Mrs. Kidd recalled. “He felt that she was making excellent progress. Tommy and I were thrilled, of course. We wanted nothing more than for Kathleen to be our—our little girl again.…” She broke off, struggling to retain her composure. “But the Barrow people let us down. They didn’t supervise the children properly.”